Quick Tips on Blackberry Control Strategies for Winter
After many years of battle, I've finally figured out how to conquer this invasive species.
This post is short and sweet.
I will write an in-depth post on this topic in the future. I’ve gotten lots of questions about the pictures that folks have been seeing about my blackberry eradication methods on social media so I thought I’d help you guys out. For now, here is a video I made last year about the method I developed to help get you started.
Why the need to specify winter blackberry control?
-The methods are a tad bit different. Herbicides - and I do use a **tiny** amount of herbicide, are ineffective in winter. When I say tiny, I mean a couple of drops per plant.
-If you’ve got a severe infestation like mine, you need to keep at it. Trust me. If you let a small patch go, those vines will be rooting from the tips, creating multiple plants where there was only one. And come spring, all of those plants will put out 10 feet or more of growth in a very short period of time.
-If you’re planning on doing any digging, winter is your most effective time. Or any time the ground is saturated. This is backbreaking work though! If your plants are small, you might be able to pull them up easily.
The focus this time of year is whacking back and disposing of the top growth.
Cut the vines back to within one or two feet of the ground. I call this bit that I left a “flag”. I’ll get to why I do that in a sec.
-Have a disposal method in place. What you don’t want is to leave the cut vines there, or pile them up somewhere. This is for a few reasons. The first is that they are a significant wildfire hazard. When they die and dry out they are extremely flammable, and your property is more likely to experience catastrophic loss should a wildfire come along. Brush piles also attract birds, which poop out pre-fertilized blackberry seeds, resulting in more blackberries growing out of your brush pile. And if you do get resprouts underneath, you will have that much harder of a time dealing with them if you’ve already got a mess on top.
Vine disposal methods.
I prefer to chop my vines up in the cheap electric chipper that you see in the video. No, the vines do not resprout once they are chopped into tiny bits. If you’re worried about it though, you could do a layer of some other material that the blackberries can’t root into (such as woodchips), followed by chopped up blackberry vines. They decompose beautifully, as you can see below.
I abused my first chipper, and it lasted for several years under those conditions. I bought a new one and will treat it better since I love them so much.
You could burn the vines, but they have a difficult time drying out. Once they are sufficiently dry, it becomes wildfire danger season very quickly— not recommended. And for the love of God - if you don’t want to set yourself on fire, don’t use gas as an accelerant. Ask me how I know.
The only other option I could think of is a yard debris bin.
The “flag”.
The reason that I leave a long stub is that winter is not the right time of year to treat with herbicides. The flag is an indication to my future self that this is a plant that needs to be treated. It’s easy to see and super effective. If you make the mistake of cutting the vine down to the ground, the vine will resprout with multiple shoots that need treatment instead of just one.
When the plants are clearly actively growing in the spring, this is the time to come back through and treat the stump. Cut it off at the base, and paint the stump with Vine and Stump killer. You can buy it for a few dollars at most major retailers. A paint applicator is included in the bottle.
Or you could go the non-chemical option, breaking your back and dig out all those roots. Chances are you’ll injure yourself in the process, and there will still be root pieces in the ground that you didn’t get out. While you’re spending all that time digging them out, your plants will happily be multiplying.
I’ve got thousands of plants, digging is not feasible for me. Mowing is also not feasible for me for a multitude of reasons - but some people do have success if they mow over the blackberry patch like a thousand times.
Best of luck! Drop me a line and let me know what works for you. And THANK YOU for doing your part to keep this plant from taking over the planet!
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